Piano pieces for children: Jennifer Linn

Jennifer Linn’s piano pieces for children

With this post I start a series of entries dedicated to composers of pedagogigal piano pieces for children. They are not avant-garde compositions but pieces that are specific to piano students in their early learning years.

In this first post I’m going to talk about some interesting works of the pianist, teacher and composer Jennifer Linn. She is a really great composer of piano pieces for children. Her pieces are relatively easy to read, to memorize and, above all, the music sounds amazing.

Collection of pieces in impressionist style

Jennifer Linn has a lot of wonderful pieces but her most interesting works, in my opinion, are those written in impressionist style. Les Petites Images and Les Petites Impressions are two collections of impressionist character pieces, with the titles of the pieces and music instructions in French. The books include a glossary of French terms which are translated into English for better understanding. These pieces explore differents sonorities, dynamics, with piano patterns that use the entire range of the keyboard, a very smart use of the pedals, and the most important thing is that students love the music and learn a lot with this works.

Les Petites Images

Les Petites Images is a collection of seven pieces for students in late elementary level. All of the pieces are amazing, I include some videos of my favorite ones: Voiliers dans le vent, Le fin d’hiver and L’oiseau-mouche.

Les Petitis Impressions

This collection is dedicated for students in an intermediate level, and it includes six pieces. If you want your students to play music from Debussy or Ravel and they are not prepared yet you can find this set of pieces very useful and exciting. Here are some sample videos of my favorite ones: Les papillons à la lumière du soleil, La poupée de Marcella and La marée de soir (Butterflies in the sunlight, Marcella’s Doll and Evening Tide).

Other Works

Jennifer Linn also has other compositions, here I talk about three of them.

Animals Have Feelings Too

This book is focussed on little children who are starting to learn to play the piano. This collection of pieces are very easy but funny and exciting for the little students. All the pieces have amusing titles and lyrics and each song is dedicated to an animal. Mad Mad Cat or Cry of the Wolf are samples of pieces contained in the book. Here are two links of the books: halleonard, bookdepository

Tales of Mistery

Another interesting collection of this composer’s piano pieces for children is Tales of Mistery. The pieces of these book are written in the same level of difficulty as Les Petites Images (for intermediate level students) but the style is different. I highly recommend this collection too because it works extraordinarily well with the students. I like to highlight two of the pieces of the book: Escape into the night and Nocturne Mystique.

Reflections

If you didn’t know Jennifer Linn before I recommend you to listen to her work on Youtube because she is amazing. I hope you enjoy her pieces as much as I do. Asides from this, the entire collections of pieces I’ve mentioned before work with children and adult students too.